


Exchange

by terajk



Category: Princess and the Frog (2009)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Chromatic Character, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Disabled Chromatic Character, Gen, People with disabilities being awesome, Pre-Canon, Vignette, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-10
Updated: 2011-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-16 20:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terajk/pseuds/terajk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He says everything he's thinking, if you know how to listen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exchange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



The young man is like a shadow. She can't hear his footfalls on the floor or the swish of his clothing. There are no complaints from any of the chairs when he sits down ( _is_ he sitting down?), and although his voice is smooth and low, it's like a riverboat horn when he finally says something.

"You have a power, Madame."

He isn't shy—not friendly, either. He's the type who doesn't need to think of what the next words out of his mouth will be, which means he's bad news. It also means that he says everything he's thinking, if you know how to listen. His voice is like the paved roads in the rich parts of the city; the smoothness covers over the holes, the natural bumps and cracks underneath. _You—a woman, an old woman, a blind woman—have a power. Why?_

"It ain't mine, son," she says.

"How do you mean." He's still paving, paving, paving, but at the end there's a cliff. Or a secret stair.

"The magic ain't mine. It's a gift from our ancestors."

"Power," he says, "is never a gift."

"You're right. It's never a gift from white people—you have to take it from them," she says. "From seeing people, too. And men. But there's more kinds of power than you know."

"Than _you_ know." _You woman, you old woman, you blind woman._

"I'm not the one asking about it."

The pavement explodes. "How do you know what I'm capable of?" _What it's like to have capability waved in front of your nose like a carrot in front of a mule, then snatched away?_ She hears his trowel working, then. "I could help you."

"No," she says.

"I see I've wasted your time," he tells her after a pause she doesn't like. "Sorry to have bothered you...Mama." _You woman, you old woman, you blind woman, you_ mother.

When he leaves, she hears only the soft rattle as the door closes. She wants to forget him, this shadow man, but she is an old woman, a mother, _his_ mother, even, and she knows better.

  



End file.
